EDITORIAL > AT LAST

It took them more than 30 years to do it, but hey, I'm not complaining: ABBA at last got together in public for an already historic photograph.

Surely they met before and they have been together in the same room for a couple of times in the last 30 years. And heck, after 1982 they even performed together on at least two occasions.

First there was the TV tribute show for Stikkan Anderson in January 1986. They met and sang a well know Stikkan song on national TV. But they did it in a studio without a live audience.

The second time was when personal manager and good friend Görel Hanser celebrated her fiftieth birthday in June 1999. People who witnessed the event claim that ABBA sang one song in front of Görel's guests. So there was a live audience, but these were all friends from the ABBA inner circle.

The first public occasion where ABBA were kind of together was for the Swedish premiere of Mamma Mia in 2005. On a cold February evening the ABBA members were in the same room in public for the first time in many years.

And then in July 2008 there was the famous Mamma Mia Movie premiere in Stockholm. ABBA could even be photographed together on the balcony of the Rival hotel, albeit not standing next to each other. That clever marketing stunt gave the Mamma Mia movie a huge amount of free publicity around the globe.

When their museum opened in 2013, everybody expected ABBA to reunite in public. And they didn't. Too much pressure, too much anticipation, too many sweaty and obsessed fans around. So only three of the four turned up.

But now: on an even colder night in January 2016, ABBA showed that they still cared for each other. They embraced the crowd, they acknowledged the fact that they are getting older. For a brief 20 seconds or so they appeared together on a small podium in the middle of a restaurant called Mamma Mia - The Party!. And the crowd went wild.

The thirty something extremely lucky fans who witnessed the event filmed and photographed every single detail of this first public get together in 30 years. Within minutes the internet exploded with dozens of smartphone pictures and movies.

I was not in Stockholm that evening. I was at home staring at my computer screen. Smiling. Feeling a wee bit emotional.

Seeing all those pictures being published was like watching a small miracle. I couldn't stop looking at the Facebook posts. I didn't feel jealous at all, much to my own surprise. I simply enjoyed the historic moment.

The four ABBA's deserved to be applauded by the hard core fans who were there. They deserved to get a standing ovation. And they deserved to get thanked for their music.